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Have Pigs Learned To Fly?

Or perhaps as G pointed out, just as sensible people can do dumb things, dumb people can occasionally do sensible things. In this case Michael Gove has finally gone and done a sensible thing for the country! GCSE results are in but not everyone is happy. In fact, it would appear that many students and teachers are not pleased with the results. But is Ofqual really to blame?

As part of a government drive to curb grade inflation, backed by education secretary Michael Gove, headteachers representing dozens of schools in England have told the Guardian that some students had been marked down by an entire grade. As devastating as that might be to students who have worked hard but received lower marks than expected, it shouldn’t discourage them from working harder.

This is precisely what the country needs to raise its educational standards. We can’t continue to cheat our youth of a proper education because we don’t want them to feel bad if they can’t easily get high marks. We’re not all equal. Some people are naturally better at maths than others, just as others may be better at sport or music. That’s not to say that we can’t reach a certain level of excellence through hard work. We can. But lowering the bar so that more students can appear to do well is not the answer.

We’ve all seen with the Olympics that the UK can perform on an international level when it comes to sports but where do we stand on education? I think we all know that it’s not exactly at gold medal standards. So why lower the bar? Why continue to dumb down the country when it deserves to be held to the highest standards?

I have never been book smart but I’m not exactly a complete tard either. I have always envied people that could just ‘get’ things immediately but I have even more respect for people that strive to do better and don’t give up when faced with a challenge. So I really hope that teachers and students will embrace these new standards and just go for it!

4 thoughts on “Have Pigs Learned To Fly?”

”it shouldn’t discourage them from working harder.” Surely that’s the point they can’t go back and work harder for it- and I’m sure they gave everything in the first place and if they didn’t they sort of deserve what they got
Also there is the problem of this moving the posts during play the whole world basically revolves round targets and you prepare yourself to reach that target and it is gutting to have met the target to what you have been told will get you a C and then you end up with a D. That’s not right.

I’m not trying to be insensitive here. But I was raised to believe that anything less than an A was failing. Of course I didn’t get all A’s but I think the point was to teach me that it’s important to strive a bit higher. So you should always strive for one mark higher to ensure that you’ll get what’s expected and maybe even more! The whole predicting grades based on mock exams amazes me. Instead of working harder after you’ve been told you might get a C, you settle for the bare minimum. That doesn’t sit well with me…for anything in life.

I think it is very short sighted of you to say that ”the kids nowadays” just settle for bare minimum. Of course everyone would prefer the higher mark- the majority of people don’t sit exams and think oh well ” I will just do enough to get my whatever- They will do all they can to get the best mark.

I was only commenting on what you said about meeting the C target, which seemed to imply that was what they were aiming for. But regardless of any targets, let’s not forget that there were many students who did well in spite of all this outrage over 8%. And again, I can appreciate and relate to how gutted some students are. I’m the product of multiple school systems and it wasn’t easy trying to juggle all the requirements!